The wind rattled against the window panes, disrupting the silence that the night had cast over them. From the right side of the guest bed, Joyce stared at the blank and boring ceiling. With her head tilted back against the pillow, she tried to imagine that the ceiling was the sky instead. That the plaster had been removed and now all that was above was just the stars and the moon, each shining through the navy blue sky. Maybe if she lifted her arm, she could reach out and grab one of those stars. 

But she couldn't. Not because they weren't real, but because Hopper's hand was interlaced with her own. That, she wouldn't change for any of the stars in the sky. To let her fingers fall from his to reach for something that wasn't there, it would be foolish. 

Oh, how that was true in more than one way. 

The man holding her hand was broken. He was traumatized and scared, a victim of the world's cruelties. She wanted the old Hopper back, of course, but that would mean reaching out for someone who didn't exist anymore. Letting go of the hand that she had to reach for one that would fade away. The fact that she had him at all was better than nothing.  

He had shown her his tears. He had allowed his vulnerabilities to drop away from the vest that he held them closest to. When she had last seen him cry, it was for an entire world of different reasons. He had cried for her and El and his life. He had cried tears of sadness whilst saying goodbye and cried tears of joy that he would be reunited with Sara. He had worn those tears with a smile, one last sliver of his strength breaking through. 

These tears came without strength. Broken pieces of himself shedding through his eyes. They came with little hope and more despair than he could physically hold in the shell of what was left. The shell had cracked and the tears had fallen. A wound that only time could heal; that was if it could even be healed at all. 

As soon as his calloused palm had met her own, she couldn't imagine ever letting go. Just the simple feeling of his skin on hers, a sensation she had once taken for granted. It seemed as if everything she took for granted had eventually left her, leaving her behind to pray for its return. 

She wasn't letting go this time. 

Her head rolled against her pillow, turning to catch a glimpse of his face. She was surprised to see that he was still awake. His eyes were red and swollen, but still open just enough to see. He wasn't looking at anything, not really. Instead, his gaze was blank and empty, attached to whatever was first in his field of vision. 

It felt foreign, really; to feel him breathing. To see the evenly rising and falling of his chest. A dead man living. She was face to face with the man who she had once laid a rose upon a pine box of. The man she had pulled that old black dress out for. Not to waltz into Enzo's for their beginning, but to drag her feet into the funeral for his ending. But it was just a box. An empty box with ashes scraped into it, hoping that they had at least gathered just a small piece of him. Nobody had realized that there wasn't any of him to gather. 

He was right there, virtually untouched. Right there, with old scars from the battlefields that had healed. Scars from his last day in Hawkins that were now faded. New wounds that would soon form into scars. Yet, untouched in the sense that he was still breathing. He may not be whole, but his heart refused to stop beating. 

Even in a time where he wasn't the man he used to be, she marveled at his strength. Once upon a time, lifetimes ago, he had told her how badly he wished for a second chance. Although he had meant with Sara, he had been given a second chance for himself instead. Given, not forced. No matter how he saw it, Joyce saw it as him choosing to live. Him choosing to continue to breathe and survive. Because that's what he was and always would be; a survivor. If that strength wasn't something to be marveled at, then she wasn't sure what would be. 

Where the side of his face rested, she could see the tears pooling against the crimson pillowcase, right beneath his exhausted and heavy eyes. Soft, unforced tears that simply shed at their own volition. The kind of lukewarm tears that beaded up and stained the trail of skin behind them, falling so easily, one by one. No sobs or heaves. Just the evidence of a quiet sadness. A tired sadness. 

This man didn't want to survive, yet he continued to weather every storm. He was no messiah, he wasn't a God amongst mere mortals. He was a man who said hurtful things, made questionable decisions, jumped the gun and went off half-cocked more often than most. The delicacy of his humanity was what stood out most to her. The things he saw did not make him a hero, he was not rid of imperfections. He was James Hopper, a man whom she wished she didn't feel so strongly for, but still, a man who had and always would take up a permanent residence in the bottom of her heart. Or, at least somewhere in her heart. 

She would need to come to terms with the fact that it was up to him what he decided to do with the reflection he saw in the mirror. To decide whether or not his pain was worth trying to heal or if he would throw away the chance he was handed. She couldn't make that choice for him, no matter how badly she wished she could. If it were up to her, she would unload the burdens off of his back and carry them herself. He would never allow that, even if it was possible. If any part of him was still left in there, he would remember all of the things she had survived herself. Her own storms that she had weathered. But that was just who she was in the core of her person; someone who desperately wished she could carry another person's damage if it meant freeing them from their pain. A leftover product of her empathy; never wishing a pain similar to her own on her worst enemy, let alone someone she cared about. 

Lately, she had been sleeping with one eye open. When she had pulled the keys which had inevitably been her finger on the trigger that killed him, she thought it was over. It was finally over because every sign had pointed to that. She had sacrificed enough that she finally felt as if the world could be satisfied with her amount of loss. Will was traumatized, El was powerless, Bob was dead, and then so was Hopper. But within all of that, the gate had closed and there was no reason for any of it to return. She had nothing left to give.

The people closest to her believed that she had left Hawkins out of fear. But no, they were wrong. There was nothing left to fear since they had shed the necessary blood on the battlefield and curved the universe's thirst for tragedy. She left because of the pain. The scars from the wounds where the blood had fallen. 

But then Murray had explained his theory, and her nights were no longer settled. Not that they really were in the first place. Illinois was better, but it hadn't sealed all of her fears. Once she had realized that Hopper was still alive, she was re-awoken to the cruelty of the world. It never left her. It had punished her instead. Three years of him in that cell would be sitting on her conscience for the rest of her life. It felt like the final punch in the face from fate; the universe's final crime against them. Until she realized that his living existence had retracted a bloodshed sacrifice. If he was not gone entirely, just in captivity, would that mean the universe would make another attempt on their lives with one true and final stab? What if the universe actually hadn't been satisfied? Was it a taunt? A promise made with fingers crossed behind its back? His death was just a sick deception; every grief-filled moment turned to a moment where she hadn't done all she could do to save him. A double-edged sword. He had been alive this whole time and she hadn't saved him fast enough, but the fact that she could save him at all meant she still had more to lose. 

After seeing the living and breathing proof of his existence, the fear had changed. It was evolving, morphing into whatever shape would scare her next. Because that was what this life was about; which boggart was best to keep her on her toes. She couldn't sink into her bed with the relief knowing he was actually alive. Instead, it was the rebirth of fears that she thought she had put to bed. At any moment, the world could take him away again. As long as air continued to fill their lungs, they would never be safe. 

She was stronger than she once was though. That wouldn't make it any easier, but with her gun holstered to her hip for the majority of the time, she wasn't so afraid. Not in the physical sense at least. She could use herself as a shield, holding her piece in a soundly positioned hand as she fired a bullet into the shadows that were coming for him. 

She was the tough one now. Time had slipped and the tables had turned without her even realizing it. 

She was the strong one. She would be the one holding him up.

She was afraid of startling him. The old Joyce, the one she had left behind, her signature move was to tip-toe around everything. Three years changed a person; it changed the way they walked and talked and thought. She wasn't blanketed by her anxiety as much as she once was, and thus her footsteps on the world had become louder. 

But to see him like this, she could feel herself recoiling and reabsorbing her old ways. Each movement had to be careful, precisely planned and delicate. He would never admit that he needed delicacy, but she knew what isolation did to a person. She knew that he would shutter and flinch at the tiniest things. She knew the strike of lightning on a stormy night would tense his body and blow his pupils. 

He would need to adapt, just as she had done. 

So, when her free hand gently lifted to brush a stray hair out of his eyes, she carefully calculated the exact movements of every cell that made up her arm. Slowly, carefully, gently. The little things that she knew he would need. How his eyes would see her hand lifting before she touched him, warning him of the contact. How the finger that brushed the hair out of his face kept perfectly controlled speed and steadiness. He needed constants; unwavering and predictable constants. 

She wanted to remember this moment, but the relief she felt from seeing his face was so potent that she was certain the memory would blur together. Just as the memories of Russia would. Her mind would fade them out; copy, cut, and paste them until they weren't accurate anymore. 

As her hand slowly came back down to her hip, she saw as he looked at her through hooded eyes. The blue meeting the brown for the first time since his rescue. He was gazing at her on purpose this time. Every other time, his eyes had only accidentally met hers before they swept back down to focus on something else. He hadn't been able to look at her for fear of seeing everything he had missed. Every line on her face that he hadn't been there to see form. 

But this time, his eyes bore directly into hers. No fight for dominance, no search for a missing piece. Just... watching. Watching as her copper-toned eyelashes gently batted against her cheeks before they rose and opened once again. He was trying to combat the urge to look away once again, to detach himself from her and retreat back into his cold and lonely mind. 

Her breath hitched in her throat, beginning to speak before she had even formulated the words in her head. "I need you... to survive this," she whispered slowly, watching as the statement settled into his mind. His lower lip flickered, gently bumping into his top lip before his mouth closed completely. 

Joyce Byers didn't need anything; not usually. She needed her kids and that was it. But her words came as a surprise even to herself. Maybe it was because she hadn't realized she was going to say them at all, or maybe it was because of how true the statement was. Could he see the change in her? How she no longer needed assistance from the world? If he did, then he would truly understand how foreign the words felt. 'I need' was not a common phrase from her anymore. But the more she thought about it, the more she had realized just how much would be riding on this. On him. If he didn't pull through this... she couldn't think about the possibilities. It could break her and everything she had built herself to be. 

The nervous shift in his eyes was the cue that he was considering those possibilities as well. The only difference was that he was not familiar with the Joyce that laid beside him. He knew she was strong, but this strength was different. The strength she had now was a strength that she had earned, not from the ability to keep standing up after the world had pushed her down. This strength came from a choice she had made, not the inevitable. She chose the growth that she was wearing, and it wasn't just a byproduct of what the world had subjected her to. 

Her words had managed to leave him speechless, but it wasn't like he was doing much talking anyway. Through the shock and awe of her pleading statement, he managed to give her a soft nod. Not much of a promise that he would, in fact, survive; rather an acknowledgment that he had heard what she was asking of him. 

She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed thickly. His lips twitched as if he was trying to work up the courage to speak. His eyes fell a few centimeters away from hers, breaking the iron clad contact between them. "Tell me about the case," his voice was raw, gravelly even. A tone she had only heard him speak in a few times. He was begging for a distraction, something that they both could understand and relate to in a world where they didn't even understand each other anymore.  

"What case?" she asked softly, her brows knitting together in confusion. 

His eyes closed and she swore she could feel him tighten his grip on her hand. "The uh— the case you mentioned that got you the promotion to detective. You said that there were a few pieces of evidence that the rest of them had missed. Tell me about the case."

She paused, trying to figure out if it was in his best interest to talk about something as stressful as a case right now. Did he really need to know the harsh and gut-wrenching details? But something in the back of her mind told her to do it. Maybe he needed it; something that was once his life to come back to him for even just a moment. 

"I uh — I was just coming off a fifteen-hour tour around the east side when I stopped back at the station house to work on my 5's and get the rest of my stuff. My Captain, he's a good guy, took me under his wing. Knows a little about the situation from back in Hawkins – or at least the public version. He calls me into his office and says that they were still working on this really nasty case we had caught. Kidnapped little girl, about six years old." she stops, paying close attention to his face to gauge his reactions. 

"They had a suspect in mind. Actually, they were dead-certain it was him but he was in the wind. My Captain asks me if I could stay back for a little longer and work the tip-line. I said 'Sure, why not? What's a little overtime?'. Y'know, I knew the kids were out doing their own things and... I really didn't want to go home to an empty house. So, before I go, I asked him about the suspect. Mark Weston. He's a registered sex offender, a recent parolee. Just a real fuckin' bad guy," she chuckled dryly, wincing at the memory. 

"Cap' says the guy's mom alibied him for the time the girl disappeared, but apparently the lead detectives on the case couldn't find anyone who could corroborate her statement either. 'Said she was just as shady as her kid. I guess they kinda hit a dead end even after they questioned her. She wasn't budging, swears her son is innocent and was wrongly convicted. So, I go and work the tip-line for a little bit. You know how it is, every psychic on the east coast calling to say they'll lead us right to the girl's dead body for a small fee and that they've got a two for one special going on and if we don't act fast, they'll never find her. A lot of the calls were bogus. But uh... I took a call and the woman on the other end says she swore she's seen Weston driving to the gas station with the girl in some dumpy station wagon a day or two earlier and didn't realize it was the kidnapped girl until she saw the news... I almost didn't believe her." she stopped again, taking a deep breath as she shook her head. 

She looked back down at Hopper who was paying her the closest attention she had seen from him yet. His eyes blown wide, almost like he was finding some sort of lifeline in her story. 

"I tell the other detectives and they brush it off because Weston didn't own a station wagon. But my gut told me to check it out. So I did. I pulled the DMV records, and there wasn't a station wagon registered to Weston himself, but one was registered to his mother. Same make and model as the woman said on the phone. I asked the guys why they didn't check before and they said they didn't have any reason to. It wasn't much to go on at first, but it was enough to update the APB we had out." 

Hopper cut in, almost enthusiastically. "What happened next?" 

God, was she really reciting a case as a bedtime story for him? 

"I dug a little deeper into the file and something caught my eye. The car wasn't registered to the same address where they had gone to talk to the mother. Someone thought maybe she had just moved and her DMV file wasn't updated, just Weston's parole file. The car was registered to a different address, one that was a few hours away. Nobody believed me when I said he was probably heading to the address where is car was registered. They kept going on with the theory that the Westons had sold the place and moved to where their current address was."

"But you weren't buying it," he said with the smallest twinkle of light and pride in his eyes.

"Not even for a second." she grinned. "I don't blame them though, I was basically a human traffic cone who was overstepping my boundaries. But my Captain... he believed me. It was the best lead they had and we were running on 48 hours of this girl being gone. Time was ticking. I knew my ass would be on the chopping block if they sent the detectives all the way out to the middle of nowhere just for it to be a dead lead, so I did the math. While everyone was walking around the bullpen with their heads up their asses, I got the numbers of all of the gas stations from here to there. I knew that car of his would be a guzzler, so he'd have to stop somewhere on his way. I called one of the gas stations about halfway from here to the address from the mother's DMV file and the guy on the other line says 'Brown station wagon? Yeah, the guy just left and he's headed south. He bought kid's toy on his way out but I thought it was weird because he didn't have a kid with him,' and I just knew. Since nobody else believed me, I grabbed my partner and hit the road." 

"You find the girl?" 

"Yeah... A rundown property on the outskirts and there he was, right in the driveway with that dumpy ass car and a look in his eye like he thought for a second he was actually gonna get away with it. We'd made it just in time to catch him there. He was fishing the little girl out of his trunk as we reached the scene. She was fine; drugged, but ultimately she was okay. The Captain said that if I had ignored that tip just like the other detectives had ignored what I said, she probably would've died, even though I hadn't been authorized to go after Weston. At the end of the day, it didn't matter because she was safe and alive. After that, people started taking me a little more seriously and my Captain helped me get my promotion."

She could feel the waves of blue in his eyes as he stared at her. If she turned her head, she could've seen the microscopic smile that tugged at his lips; a smile filled with more pride than she could've ever imagined. She suddenly felt bashful under his intense gaze, becoming reacquainted with the feeling of being so small next to him.

She wasn't the same woman he had left behind. Not by a longshot. But goddamn was he proud of who she had become. 

His eyes dropped as soon as hers did, but the hidden smile that he wore refused to fade "Always knew you'd make a good cop." he whispered, his chest filling with warmth as he heard the soft snort come from under her breath. 

In the midst of his overwhelming pride, a wave of despair still managed to crash over him. She had grown so much without him. Back in Hawkins, he had flattered himself with the idea that he had been responsible for helping her grow. Maybe it wasn't a complete fallacy, but it had been the heart of his ego speaking. She was stronger than anyone he had ever met, with or without him. He had practically survived after '83 with the notion that if it weren't for himself, she would've fallen apart. Hell, it was pretty much his reason to live besides El. Joyce had needed him — or, at least he had thought so. 

But she was proving him wrong with every passing second. She was inconceivably strong and resilient. It wasn't because of him or her kids, it was because that was just who she was. Someone who picked up the pieces of her repeatedly broken life and just kept fixing it. Nobody else was responsible for her healing or for her growth.

Thus leaving him with the question of purpose. Joyce needed him to survive this, but she didn't need him. El, well he hadn't seen her in three years. She had Joyce and her brothers now, she probably didn't really need him either. 

But for Hopper, his way of survival was the need to be needed. Losing Sara had proven that in spades. Of course, he hadn't realized yet just how much Joyce needed him in her life. She was getting better and relying on only herself, but she was even better at pretending to be okay without anyone. 

Neither of them had realized they had drifted into a deep sleep until they had woken up the next morning. They had woken up in the same position they had fallen asleep in; hands holding, facing each other, foreheads just barely apart from one another. Joyce wanted to roll around and let the sun shining through the windows soak into her skin, but a persistent nagging voice in her head told her that she needed to wake up. 

That was when she had glanced at the alarm clock that sat on the bedside table of the guest room. The bright red letters alerted her that it was nearly noon, and she instantly panicked. El and Will were coming home soon from their friends' houses and nothing was ready. She had meant to talk to Hopper about it, to warn him and talk to him about the plan she had set up. 

El would always be Hopper's daughter, but she was also Joyce's daughter. She had mothered the girl for over three years, legally adopting her after two years had passed. She wanted what was in El's best interests just as much as Hopper's too. Her gut told her that meant that it would be best if they eased into this. There wasn't really a hand guide on how to reintegrate a father who'd been held hostage in Russia into his daughter's life again. So, she was winging it the best she possibly could. 

In the midst of violently scrubbing the countertops to relieve anxiety, she watched as Hopper nervously glanced around the living room. Everything to him was foreign now — it was hard for her to wrap her head around that. This had been her life for so long now, it all came so easy to her. But for him, it was just as foreign as being trapped in Russia. No familiarity, no comfort zone. Nothing. Just photos of his only family hanging on the wall, aged three years since the last time he had seen them. 

She watched as he inspected the same photo she had kept her eyes glued to the night previous. The kids and her after she graduated from the academy. Even from the kitchen, she could instantly spot the emptiness within his eyes. He had missed out on watching both of his daughters growing up. He had thought about that for the 1095 days he had spent staring at the cement walls of his cell. 

"Hop?" she asked, letting up from her rageful scrubbing of the kitchen countertops. "Are you okay?" He had been stationary, staring at the same photo until she had lost track of time. What hadn't he missed? 

He nodded softly at her question, stepping away to break his contact from the photograph. "Yeah," he answered with an obvious lie. "Yeah, I'm okay." 

She sighed, setting down the cloth she held in her hand and carefully made her way over to him. Each of her footsteps held caution, reminding her of the nights where she carefully waded through dark alleys on foot. Light as a feather, she reminded herself. As soon as she reached him, her hand cautiously rose to rest on his shoulder. "I um... I wanted to talk to you about something," 

He could sense the hesitancy in her voice, her face showing the slightest bit of recoil as she waited for his reaction. "Okay?" he knitted his brows, moving to sit down on her couch as she paced around the living room. 

"Um... I don't want to come off as cold by saying this. I've thought a lot about it, and I think this is the most important way to handle things. El is gonna come home for a little while, but my fear here is that everyone is gonna need some time to uh... readjust." she paused, waiting for the change in his face that never came. "So, El has a tutoring lesson in a few hours and I think it's important for her to go. I don't really want to cancel it because I think it'll be good for you both to spend some time together and then take a little break and we'll all be back here for dinner." 

The words sat with Hopper for a moment, his blank face revealing nothing to indicate how her statement settled within him. It had been so long without having a kid to raise and focus on, his thoughts weren't in the right place to consider his child's wellbeing. He didn't even know his daughter anymore. He didn't know how she reacted to stress or happiness. He didn't know her favorite color or her favorite class to study. 

Joyce did. 

Joyce knew because she had raised El longer than he did. She had spent more time with El than he did. Joyce knew everything about her by now; even the things that Hopper hadn't had the time to know and learn. She was her mom... but he was just an anomaly from the past. 

Before he had any time to think about replying, both of them turned their heads to the sound of the knob creaking on the front door. Hopper rose to his feet, his heart pounding in his ears as he waited to see his daughter come around the corner. 

"Mom? Your car is here, are you home?" El's familiar voice called out into the silence. Hopper's breath hitched in his throat, the adrenaline filling his stomach like a faucet. The sound of keys clattered to the credenza by the door. Just as she made her way through the small entryway, she stopped, her bag dropping to the floor as her jaw fell. 

"Oh my God."